BEIJING: The upcoming annual sessions of China’s national legislature and political advisory body provide a prime opportunity for observers to gain a unique vantage point to witness the country’s democracy in action.
From group deliberations to discussions with lawmakers and political advisors, President Xi Jinping will be active in China’s democratic policy formulation and decision-making.
Xi, acting in his capacity as one of the nearly 3,000 deputies elected to the National People’s Congress (NPC), will join his fellow deputies to review and vote on the performance of the central government, the national legislature, the top court and the top procuratorate over the past year. He will also cast his vote on any new law and major revision submitted to the session for deliberation.
Throughout his career, the Chinese leader has championed people’s democracy.
“Democracy is a value shared by all humanity and an ideal that the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the Chinese people have always upheld,” said Xi, also general secretary of the CPC Central Committee.As the top leader of both the Party and the state, he has spearheaded efforts to pursue whole-process people’s democracy, a key concept put forward by Xi himself to advance China’s political landscape after seeing the shortfalls of Western democracy.
Under his guidance, China has made all-around progress in improving the institutions, standards, and procedures of socialist democracy, and advanced socialist consultative democracy by way of extensive participation.
He has strongly advocated for unity between leadership by the Party, the running of the country by the people, and law-based governance to ensure that state governance escapes the historical cycle of rise and fall.
Zhang Weiwei, director of the China Institute of Fudan University, highlighted that Chinese democracy diverges from the Western model that is centered around multi-party rotation and universal suffrage for leaders.
Chinese democracy, Zhang said, emphasizes extensive public participation, policy consultations, and the pursuit of good governance.
Half a month before this year’s “two sessions,” the Party’s flagship magazine Qiu Shi published an article by Xi on democracy, expounding on the people’s congress system.
“The system is an important institutional vehicle for realizing whole-process people’s democracy,” Xi wrote, drawing attention to its essence — that all power of the state belongs to the people and the people’s position as masters of the country should be protected to the greatest extent. After re-elected Chinese president and chairman of the country’s Central Military Commission at the annual session of the national legislature in March 2023, Xi emphasized the imperative of adopting a people-centered development philosophy. –Agencies
